MeToo...Nanny State?

The MeToo movement is all the rage today, introduced by actress Ashley Judd in her famous “Nasty Woman” speech on the Saturday after the 2017 inauguration...written by a high-school student. The target of the women's angst/hysteria is men, the devils. Here is a piece on the subject written in March 2010:

The “Nanny” State in Spades!

It’s been sad in recent years to watch individual non-society-threatening freedom being eroded in this country, both individually and collectively. People have to buckle up in their cars whether they want to or not. Owners of establishments who don’t wish to disallow smoking therein must do so anyhow. Or…they must hire and fire not on the basis of job-requirements but on the basis of quotas, never mind the extra expense involved, usually passed on to the consumer.

This isn’t to say there shouldn’t be laws to protect citizens from other citizens, such as those relating to speed restrictions on roads or to the requirement that drivers be sober and not distracted. Without laws governing societal conduct, there would be anarchy, so this isn’t about extreme libertarianism.

The third example above is a case in point with reference to freedom. Wal-Mart has a distribution facility in London, Kentucky, in which there are about 900 employees plus another one hundred contracted truck-drivers. In this huge warehousing operation, employees must be able to do heavy lifting. Anyone who has ever lifted a hundred-pound bag of spuds knows what this means. Since this is the case, Wal-Mart attempted to hire people it felt could do this job, the ultimate decision apparently being to employ mostly men for the quite obvious reason that, collectively, men are considerably physically stronger than women.

In some areas, women are mentally stronger than men, but at this facility the premium was placed on physical strength. A while back, a lady charged discrimination when she applied for a job at this facility and was turned down, she said, just because she was a woman. Well, yes…that might have been the case, not hard to believe. It’s perfectly obvious that if two employees instead of one are needed to heft a hundred pounds of spuds when one man can do it alone, the cost to the company for labor goes up to be passed on to the consumer while also thereby degrading the company’s competitive position in the marketplace, not to mention its responsibility to its shareholders.

So…the lady sued Wal-Mart nearly 10 years ago and the settlement just came down but only after it had become a class-action suit just ripe for any woman who could make a similar charge, real or imagined, to get in on the action. Wal-Mart settled for $11.7 million to be divvied up among all these ladies and any others who can still get in on the windfall, along with $250,000 in “administration costs.” One can only guess at what the real winners received – the lawyers – but they probably got a third of the stash, at least.

In other words, Wal-Mart could not conduct its business in the most efficient way possible but had to do business according to the way the government decides is “fair,” recognizing diversity as paramount in hiring, not the satisfying of qualifications for employment, in this case, physical strength. The next step in the process could be that inevitable “back injury” for which the company insurance must be responsible or – much better – a woman’s lawsuit in the interest of collecting a gazillion bucks for the ruination of her ability to make a living, also real or imagined.

Suppose a man applies for a job in Wal-Mart’s office but can neither type nor use a calculator. Will he be hired? Of course not, even though virtually no physical strength is required! He simply lacks the proper qualifications. Does anybody care about that? Of course not, since nobody gives a fig and men don’t cry! They just go looking somewhere else.

There’s a beautiful irony in all of this. Wal-Mart employs about 1.4 million workers, of whom 63% are women, even though they make up only 50.7% of the population. According to diversity-think, men are entitled to 49.3% of the jobs but hold only 37% of them. Why is that? Men are walking the streets these days looking for work at the same time Wal-Mart is discriminating against them…actually owing them 690,200 jobs but giving them only 518,000. Now…is that fair?

Living in a “nanny state” is no fun, but the progressives are determined to make this country into one so profoundly and correctly diversified that government will regulate everything and every service. People will become robots, except for those at the top, of course. Just ask Wal-Mart. In the meantime, all you men walking the streets…FILE THAT LAWSUIT! Some 172,000 of you are ENTITLED!

And so it goes...again!
Jim Clark